ANAHEIM — All those flu-like symptoms are falling off Ryan Getzlaf like sprawling defensemen.

He’s not sick anymore. He’s just a carrier.

He carries pucks, carries lines, carries a team back to another rink when it seemed inevitably headed for The Lake.

He dragged himself through Games 4 and 5, achy, sluggish, not really into it. Suddenly the Ducks were flushed and feverish, although that might have been the reflection from 10 illuminated goal lamps.

Game 6 rolled around Tuesday night and the Ducks underwent a test to see how much calcium was in the spine. They passed with flying forwards, particularly Getzlaf and Corey Perry, and they survived the Red Wings, 2-1, to conjure up Game 7 in that big metallic box on the edge of the Detroit River Thursday.

“This is what you play for,” Perry said, eyes sparkling in the aftermath. “We’re going back to The Joe for Game 7. That’s about as exciting a time as you can get.”

Especially when so many players have their names embossed on a Stanley Cup that lies two rounds away.

“We’ll have to play better,” Randy Carlyle said, with the hint of a smile. “There’s always a lot of pressure in a Game 7, but there’s a little more pressure on the home team.”

“More desperate,” Wings coach Mike Babcock said of the Ducks. But then, they’re pretty good desperadoes. As a franchise, they’re 8-5 in win-or-walk games.

Beware the team that can keep its fingers wiggling after it takes your best shot. Particularly when so many of those fingers wear rings.

Getzlaf scored the first goal, assisted on the second, and again showed how he can annex large parts of a hockey game.

“I’m feeling a little better every day,” Getzlaf said. “I never really had a fever, but I just didn’t have any energy. Game 5 was worse than Game 4. That was a real struggle. But I got some rest and some fluids, and I’m ready to move forward.”

When the wagons need to be circled, Carlyle has a tendency to do two things: deflect the pressure, and put Chris Pronger with Scott Niedermayer. Of course, that often turns out to be the same thing.

The Ducks were ordered to have fun during Monday’s practice, messing around with their sticks in their opposite hands. “We wanted to make it fun to be on the ice again,” said Carlyle. Remember the Calgary bar and grill where the Ducks spent the day before Game 7 in 2006, and then fortuitously watched Carlyle’s Winnipeg Jets try to deal with Wayne Gretzky, on a greatest-hits TV show? The Ducks won in dominant fashion, 3-0. This was a bit like that.

Carlyle correctly figured the Ducks had already beaten themselves enough after their non-competitive 4-1 loss in Detroit Sunday, and the four-and-a-half hour flight home that followed it.

“When you put your two big guys back there it gives you a lot of confidence,” Perry said, “but then Beauch and Wiz (Francois Beauchemin, James Wisniewski) had to do a good job on the (Henrik) Zetterberg line, and they did that, too.”

The Ducks were the better team in the first period and took a carryover power play into the second. They didn’t score, but Niklas Kronwall inadvertently heaved the puck over the glass to draw Detroit’s second delay penalty of the game, and second consecutive penalty.

The Ducks took advantage of this Duck-like habit, with Getzlaf rushing out of his end, going to the net, getting inside Jonathan Ericsson, and scoring on the rebound from Perry’s shot.

Later, Perry came back hard to knock away a Detroit bid, slid into Jonas Hiller’s net, got up, started skating and wound up beside the net when Getzlaf unloaded. His deflection made it 2-0 with 2:25 left in the second.

“Yeah, it was speed,” Perry joked. “Getzie held the puck for a while at the blue line, which gave me some time to get there.”

No one had any illusions about what was coming in the third. The Red Wings had 18 of the 24 shots, strafed Hiller repeatedly, and made him jump to save Johan Franzen’s screamer in the final seconds.

But the Ducks also got the puck behind Detroit’s net twice, inside the last minute, to complicate things.

Before the buzzer, all the bottled-up stuff fizzed out. Yes, that was Niedermayer whaling away on Datsyuk, in a battle of U.N. ambassadors. That was Perry and Brian Rafalski, and that was Getzlaf paired off with Marian Hossa. Some, like Babcock, found it unnecessary, and some found it alarming, from a health standpoint.

Most of those who have been through these special springs with the Red Wings and Ducks saw it for what it was: the opening seconds of Game 7.

“We’ve started preparing for it already,” said Getzlaf, healthy like a horse.

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